Tired
by cherry-sodas
Summary: Lynnie Jones was eleven years old when she had her first crush at school. [AU. Embedded into the 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe.]


Tired

**Before I begin, I want everyone to know that I started this story just minutes after publishing "Wolfish." That way, you know that I'm not slacking, even if you don't see this story until May 2020. Let's hope it doesn't take nearly that long!**

**This story follows Lynnie Jones, one of two OFCs I created who isn't biologically tied to one of the canon gang members … but she is related to that other OFC! She's Lucy Bennet's cousin, which means she's Dallas Winston's cousin by marriage. It's all very complicated. If you've read 'See My Friends' and 'Turn the Page,' you know that Lynnie is Darry's primary love interest in this, the annoyingly chipper 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe. I've typed those words so many times there's starting not to look like words anymore. But anyway … away we go!**

* * *

_1956_

Lynnie Jones was eleven years old when she had her first crush at school.

She'd always had crushes on the boys in the magazines. She'd fallen in love with portraits of James Dean and cried when he died as if he had been an old friend. She swooned when Dean Martin would come on the radio and wished someone would dance with her to his songs – preferably Dean-O himself. But the boy in class with thick sandy hair and dreamy blue eyes would have to do.

When the early summer came upon her home in New Haven, Connecticut, she looked forward to three things: ice cream trucks, long days at the park, and a month-long visit from her Aunt Esther, Uncle Jack, and their daughter – Lynnie's favorite cousin, Lucy.

Lucy was about three years younger than Lynnie, but she was smart and funny, so Lynnie always had a good time with her. They were like sisters who almost never had the chance to see one another. Maybe that was why they got along so well. When Lucy and her parents arrived at Lynnie and her parents' home in the middle of June, Lynnie was thrilled to take Lucy to the park with her so they could spy on Lynnie's school crush.

She took eight-year-old Lucy by the hand and practically galloped with her down to the park. Lucy was living in Chicago with her parents at the time, and she didn't get a chance to play outside very much. Streets were too dangerous, her mother said. No one knew it would become such a theme in her life (and in Lynnie's life, too). So, when Lynnie told Lucy they were going down to the park, Lucy assumed they'd be going there to play on the swing set and maybe grab a couple of ice cream cones, just in time to sit in the shade and read – Lynnie would read one of her fan magazines, and Lucy would read whatever book she was certainly too young to really understand. That summer, it was _The Mysteries of Udolpho_.

The cousins sat underneath a willow tree and waited. After a little while, Lucy rested the thick book on her knees and looked at Lynnie, bored and incredulous.

"What are we _doing _here?" Lucy asked.

"We're waiting," Lynnie said and casually flipped a page in the latest issue of _Photoplay_.

"Waiting for _what_?"

"For the boy I like to come down here with his friends. They always come down here after lunch and play tag football for a couple of hours."

Lucy rolled her eyes.

"Why in the world would we come down to the park and not swing, eat ice cream, _or _read together? Why would we come down to the park to see some stupid boy?"

"He's not stupid. He's adorable."

"_Adorable _isn't the opposite of _stupid_. Haven't you met your neighbor's dog?"

"You just don't understand, Lucy."

"I understand plenty. And what I understand is that there are a million more fun things we could do than sit here and wait for some _boy _to play tag football with his friends."

"We're not waiting for that, exactly. We're waiting to see if he notices me."

"Has he ever noticed you before?"

"No."

"Then why would today be _any _different?"

"Any day could be different. That's why we come here, and that's why we wait."

Lucy rolled her eyes again. Lynnie felt a pang in her heart. Maybe one day, when Lucy was a little older than the summer between the second and third grades, she would be able to more fully appreciate what it meant to go down to the park and stare at a boy, fantasizing that he'd come over and talk to her. Surely, all girls went through that change when they were hardly even looking. And maybe, one day, the boy actually _would _come up to her.

But Lynnie doubted it. She was the tallest girl in her class, which consequently made her the biggest all around. Where all the other girls in school still looked like little girls, Lynnie was growing into a woman by the (awkward and unfair) minute. In other words, her hips looked different than the other girls in her class, and that made her seem like exactly what she didn't want to be – _fat_. Lynnie would carry that word around in her heart like a dirty secret for the rest of her life. At eleven, of course, she didn't know it yet. She just held out hope that maybe the boy with the sandy hair and blue eyes would see her beauty for what it was (or rather, what her _mother _said it was) and come talk to her. It was what she thought she needed.

"I still think there are a million more fun things we could be doing," Lucy said.

"Oh, yeah?" Lynnie asked. "Name one."

"OK. We could go see _Giant_. I know how you like James Dean."

"It would just break my heart."

"Oh, _please_. You didn't know him."

"Maybe I didn't. But the way his eyes look in _Rebel without a Cause _– the way he cries like that because he's in so much pain. It feels like I know him as well as I know myself."

Lucy clicked her tongue.

"You know what you are?" she asked. "You're a drama queen."

"I take that as a compliment," Lynnie said.

"You really shouldn't."

Then, out of ostensibly nowhere, Lynnie perked up. She grabbed Lucy's arm excitedly, and though Lucy tried to twist out of her cousin's grip, Lynnie wouldn't let her. She began to excitedly hit Lucy on the forearm as she looked at the group of people passing them in the distance.

"Lucy!" she squealed. "There he is! There he is!"

"Who?" Lucy asked. "James Dean? Because that's the only way I'm going to let you get away with digging your nails into me like this."

"Not James Dean! _Joe_."

Lucy wrinkled her nose and looked out into the distance where Lynnie's eyes were fixed. Sure enough, there was a group of boys standing around in a group with a football. Lucy noticed that Lynnie was staring at the tallest one – the leader of the pack with blonde hair and blue eyes. Predictably, Lucy frowned.

"He doesn't impress me," she said.

"What do you know?" Lynnie asked hotly. "You're eight."

"I'll be nine in October, and I know lots of things. I know how to be sarcastic."

"Yeah, what kind of eight-year-old understands sarcasm as well as you do?"

"The kind of eight-year-old whose daddy lets her sit in on his classes."

Lynnie smiled a little. It sure was nice having Lucy around, even if she was only eight and didn't yet understand the appeal of cute boys in the park. She made Lynnie feel like she wasn't alone. There were girls at school, of course, but none of them seemed to really like her enough. They always seemed to snicker behind her back. Maybe it was because she was bigger than they were. She swallowed her spit hard and wondered if Lucy knew that was why they wouldn't be getting an ice cream at the park that day.

They waited in silence for a long time, but Joe – the beautiful boy whom Lynnie was sure she really loved – never paid her any mind. The closest he came to acknowledging her was when he stopped the game and squinted in her direction, but that hadn't been about her. Instead, it had been about the ice cream truck behind her. Lynnie clutched the picnic blanket beneath her (too thick, she knew it, they had to be) thighs. She didn't know how hungry she was until she saw a parade of junior-high boys stampede toward the chocolate and vanilla.

Lucy turned to look at her cousin when the boys bum rushed the ice cream. At first, she wanted to ask Lynnie if that was a good enough excuse to talk to this boy she seemed to like so much, but then, she saw the look on Lynnie's face. She didn't just look sad. She looked tired. So, Lucy, as a particularly nimble eight-year-old, wrapped her elder cousin up into a hug – a sister's hug.

Slowly, Lynnie accepted Lucy's affection and hugged her back. They were quiet for a little while, and Lynnie hoped she could transmit some of the hope she wished she had for herself onto Lucy. _Remember, you're lovely. Remember, you're brilliant. Remember, you're good enough_. She could never be sure if Lucy could hear her, but it was enough to pretend.

"Tell me a story," Lucy said.

"A story?" Lynnie repeated.

"Yeah. Like you did when I was little."

"You're still little."

"I don't feel like it."

Lynnie snorted with amusement. If only she knew. If only she knew how much easier it was to be little. When you were little, you didn't have to worry about getting too big. When you were little, you didn't have to worry that a sandy-haired, blue-eyed boy in your class would rather look at his grubby friends and an ice cream cone than look for a second at you.

"What stories did I tell you when you were little?" Lynnie asked.

"Come on, you know," Lucy said. "The stories where the girls get married. Cinderella, Snow White …"

"Sleeping Beauty."

"Yeah. Her. Tell me that one."

"You want to hear that one?"

"Sure."

Lynnie cleared her throat.

"Well," she said. "Once upon a time in a castle, a king and queen welcomed a baby daughter – the princess."

"Your dad always calls you _princess_," Lucy said.

"Got a problem with that, kid?" Lynnie asked.

"No. Just thinking. What does it mean if you get called a princess?"

Lynnie wrinkled her nose in confusion.

"I guess I've never thought about it before," she said. "I think it means … well, it means I'm his daughter, and he loves me."

"Yeah, well, I'm a daughter, and my dad loves me. Know what he calls me? _Lucy_."

"Well, you're not much of a princess."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I like pink, and you like punching things."

"That's what it takes to be a princess? Liking pink?"

Lynnie sighed. In truth, she didn't know if that was what it took. She just knew that her father had always called her _Princess Lynnie_, and she'd believed that until she was nearly six years old and entered her kindergarten class. She'd walked around that room with all the royal confidence in the world, and then she tried to make friends with the other girls in her playgroup. She'd introduced herself as Lynnie and said she wanted to play Sleeping Beauty. The other girls were willing, but only if the skinniest blonde girl in the group would play the princess. Lynnie, they said, had to be wicked fairy Carabosse because both of them were big and ugly. She was humiliated, but she went along with it. It was better to be the big and ugly villain than alone.

"I don't know," Lynnie said. "It's just something my dad says."

"Hmm. Do you think it's a good thing?"

Lynnie thought for a moment. She considered what it would be like to be a princess, like in all the fairytales she read and repeated to Lucy when she was an even smaller girl. Princesses didn't have very many lines. Sleeping Beauty spent most of her eponymous tale knocked unconscious, waiting for a man to kiss her and wake her up. It wasn't a very exciting life. It wasn't a life where she got to make a lot of her own decisions. And yet, it was the only kind of life Lynnie could understand where a man always thought you were beautiful. When she was eleven years old, she couldn't think of anything she wanted so much as to be beautiful – the kind of beautiful you couldn't pass up for an ice cream cone. She was so tired of wishing for things to be different. She was so tired of feeling ugly. She was so tired.

"Yeah," Lynnie said, and at eleven years old, she spoke with conviction. "I think it's a good thing."

Lucy flinched, and Lynnie pretended not to notice. It was easier that way. It was easier to drift off into a fairytale where she got to be beautiful, even if she had to be silent. When sandy-haired, blue-eyed Joe and his friends walked back their way, ice cream cones in hand, they seemed not to notice that anyone was sitting on a picnic blanket underneath the willow tree, much less anyone they'd seen in class everyday that year (and for many years before that). They wouldn't have passed her up if she were beautiful. They wouldn't have passed her up if she could really look like a princess.

"Are you OK?" Lucy asked.

Lynnie nodded, though even she knew it was a lie.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm just a little tired. Do you want me to keep telling you the story?"

Lucy nodded, and although Lynnie obliged, she couldn't help but wish (deeply down inside of herself, where she was too young and too embarrassed to think) Lucy had said no. She wasn't sure how much more _princess _she could take.

* * *

_1959_

Lynnie Jones was fourteen years old when Disney made _Sleeping Beauty _into a movie.

Though the movie was released in the theater in January, Lynnie hadn't seen it. Her mother was concerned ("It's your favorite fairytale, Lynn!" she'd begged, but Lynnie hadn't listened.), but Lynnie knew what she knew: She was going into high school soon. High school was too old to buy a ticket for a fairy princess movie. But when the summer rolled around, and Aunt Esther, Uncle Jack, and Lucy (now eleven years old) were coming to visit, Lynnie figured she had an excuse to go down to the movie theater.

She shouldn't have been surprised that Lucy was having no part of it.

"No!" she said. "I don't want to see _Sleeping Beauty_, with you, or with anyone."

"But you love to go to the movies," Lynnie said. "You prefer it to going to the park."

"Yes, but that's when I get to see something I like. And I _don't_ like _Sleeping Beauty_."

"How would you even _know that_? You've never seen it!"

"I'm eleven, Lynnie. That's too old to get dragged to some cartoon princess movie."

"Have you ever noticed you're always too old to do what someone asks you to do?"

"I wouldn't say it if it weren't always true."

"I'm fourteen. I want to see the movie. Am I too old for it?"

Lucy was going to say something, but her mother walked past the squabbling girls before she could say something she would regret.

"Lucy, get a grip," Esther said. "You're going to the movies with your cousin, and that's final."

Lucy sighed but straightened her spine. Lynnie had to hide her grin by turning her mouth inward to touch her shoulder. That was the best thing about getting Lucy to do something. She was (seemingly) physically incapable of refusing anything her mother asked of her. She had a fearful respect of Esther that Lynnie admired.

A little while later, the cousins made their way down to the local movie theater where Lucy insisted on buying herself two Coca-Colas.

"Are you insane?" Lynnie asked.

"If I'm going to be forced to sit through some fairytale princess movie, I want to be entertained," Lucy said. She took a long sip of her first Coca-Cola. "This is my entertainment."

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised," Lynnie said.

"I heard it didn't make a lot of money," Lucy said. "That can't be a good sign."

"Why do you _know that_?"

"I read a lot. You'd be impressed with how much reading you can get done when you've already done the reading for your classes."

"What are we going to do with you?"

"I make my own choices."

Lynnie rolled her eyes (only half kindly) and motioned for Lucy to follow her into the theater. They took their seats, and after a few more sassy objections from Lucy, the movie began. And even though she was fourteen years old and should have worried more about getting her _own _true love's kiss and dreaming about her _own _perfect dress, Lynnie was enchanted from the moment the film began. Even Lucy began to soften when she discovered there were fairies in the movie.

"The blue one's a real gas," Lucy whispered to Lynnie. Though Lynnie nodded, she was mostly ignoring her. Instead, Lynnie was fixated on Princess Aurora – Briar Rose, Sleeping Beauty, whatever the story wanted to call her. She wasn't real, of course, but that didn't change the fact that for Lynnie, she was the epitome of beauty and grace. That was a princess, just like her father had always called her. That was what she should be.

But the longer Lynnie watched the movie, the more her face fell. For as much as she knew her hair was lovely, long, and flaxen like Aurora's, she knew it couldn't deceive anyone into thinking she was beautiful. She was going into the ninth grade soon – _high school _– and she was still the biggest girl in her class. Only now, when she said she was the biggest girl, she didn't just mean that she was the tallest. Over the past year or two, the other girls had grown to match her, and she didn't feel like she was standing so high above everyone else. Now, she was still bigger, but in the way no one wanted to talk about unless they were snickering at her. She had wide hips and something of a gut. _Sturdy_, her father called it one day after wondering if his daughter wanted to join in on a football game with the neighbor and his two sons. She could handle it, he said. She was _sturdy_. Lynnie wasn't stupid. She knew that _sturdy _must have been some sort of code for _fat_. She could never be beautiful if she was _fat_. She could never be a princess, and no one would ever fall in love with her. At fourteen, she was certain of it. People would feel sorry for her as the years went on. They would say things like _if only _or _poor dear_. It hurt to think about, and the more she thought on it, the more likely it always seemed. Never had it been more likely than when she saw Prince Philip defeat the dragon, climb the castle walls, and kiss Aurora back to life. No one would ever do that for her – not even the realistic equivalent. No one would ever scale the castle walls for a girl who could barrel over the biggest boy in her eighth-grade class.

Lynnie's eyes began to mist over. Eventually, they were saturated with tears. She was quiet about it, but when the movie screen lit up just a bit, Lucy was startled by the look on her cousin's face. After a silent gasp of her own, she put her hand on Lynnie's knee.

"Lynn?" she asked quietly. "What's the matter? Why're you crying?"

Lynnie sniffed and wiped her eyes a little bit. She didn't want Lucy to know what she was thinking. In truth, Lynnie knew that her way of thinking wasn't the greatest in the world. Girls had to be worth more than prettiness and kisses. She'd heard Aunt Esther mutter something about it to her father one night when she was supposed to have already gone to bed. That, Lynnie figured out years earlier, was when the best conversations happened. That was when you learned the most about what was to come in your future (and, perhaps more importantly, how you could change it). Lynnie didn't want Lucy to grow up and think she needed to look perfect to attract a husband. There was more to Lucy than that. There was more to _Lynnie _than that. Then again, there was just more of Lynnie in general. She sucked in her breath, hating her guts, and then released. She turned to Lucy.

"I'm OK," she said, and she hoped she could make herself believe it. "I'm just … wondering what it would be like to be as beautiful as a princess."

"You are beautiful, Lynnie," Lucy said like it was some kind of irrefutable fact.

Lynnie snorted a little. She didn't want to be like that, but it was hard. It was hard to fake it when your blood was screaming at you to hate yourself and tell people about it. Maybe if she told someone about it, she could get help. Maybe she could get it out of her system and learn what it was like to love herself the way her parents loved her. But it didn't work that way. When Lynnie spoke about her insecurities out loud, she realized it only gave them more power. She only wanted to say more – believe more.

"I'd like to be, I suppose," Lynnie finally said. "I've got nice hair, and my face is OK. But the rest of me …"

"What rest of you?" Lucy asked. She seemed genuinely confused.

"Come on, Lucy. Don't be stupid."

"I'm _not _stupid. I don't understand what you're talking about."

"Just watch the rest of the movie. I think it's almost over."

"How can I just sit here and watch a movie while you're _crying _because you think you're ugly?"

Lynnie's heart dropped. She'd never used the word _ugly _to describe herself. That was all from Lucy's head. Did Lucy think she was ugly? Her own cousin! What was she worth, really, if her own cousin thought she was ugly?

Her thoughts began to spin around in her head, just like the spinning wheel Maleficent had used to curse Aurora. Only instead of falling into a beautiful sleep, Lynnie just became tired. There was something else – a twitchy feeling in her brain she couldn't quite give a name. But she was tired. All she wanted was to rest – to rest from her body and brain, to rest from feeling like she needed to protect Lucy from feeling this way about herself, and to rest from feeling like Lucy was somehow the enemy. Every thought she had contradicted the one before it. She was on a ride, and there was no way to stop it. Lynnie was tired, but there was no solution. There was no rest. The words just kept coming.

_Ugly. Fat. Ugly. Fat. No one will ever love you, Lynnie. Ugly. Fat. Fat, fat, ugly_.

No prince would ever scale the castle walls or fight a dragon lady for her. She wasn't beautiful enough. She wasn't beautiful at all. Instead, if something ever came around the bend – if someone was ever to think they loved her – she would take it, no questions asked. She'd be grateful. She would have no other choice.

Secretly, she hoped Lucy couldn't hear any of her thoughts in that dark theater. Somewhere inside of herself, Lynnie knew that what she was saying – the way she valued herself – was absolutely wrong.

* * *

_1964_

Lynnie Jones was nineteen-and-a-half when she became Lynnie Collins.

At first, the whole thing really had seemed like the kind of fairytale romance Lynnie had spent so much of her adolescence convinced she would never have. Like all the women in her family, she attended Smith College in Massachusetts, and in the fall of her first semester, she attended a football game at UMass Amherst because her roommate thought it would be fun. Fun, as Lynnie would very quickly learn, was code for _finding a husband_. Her roommate must have flirted with a dozen guys that afternoon and into the night. It wasn't until the third quarter of the game that an Amherst student came around and sat beside her. He said something about not being very into football. He preferred art museums. He was a big fan of Van Gogh. Lynnie said that her cousin, Lucy, was a big fan of Van Gogh, but she lived in Oklahoma now, so it was harder for her to see art than it was when she lived nearer to the East. The guy told her that his name was Jim Collins, but everybody called him Big Jim because he was six feet and five inches. He used to play basketball, but there was no way he'd make the college team because he tended to trip over his own feet on the court. He was a senior at UMass Amherst majoring in business (because his father told him to) and minoring in Art History (without his father's knowledge). And after awhile, it became clear that he thought Lynnie was _pretty_. She was blown away.

Perhaps it should have been less surprising. In the years since she cried during Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_, she'd committed to changing the way she looked. Her hair was the same – lovely, long, and flaxen. But everything else was different. Where once she'd had thicker thighs and something of a gut, she was now skinny. She was everything she thought she ought to be when she looked in the mirror. No one would ever tell her that she needed to play Carabosse again. She could no longer be mistaken for big and ugly ever again. Look at all the proof she had! A college boy had sat down next to her at a football game and asked her for a date because he thought she was pretty! What else did she really need? Some mothers would have let her drop out of college after that. It would have been a relief – a money-saver, for sure. Lynnie had a little more dignity and self-preservation than that. She'd see it through. Maybe she wouldn't do what she thought she would. Originally, she thought she'd follow in Uncle Jack's footsteps and major in English literature. But now, that seemed like the wrong thing to do. After her third date with Big Jim, it was decided. She would become an elementary school teacher. It was like being a mother, but you got paid (very little) to do it. That was the best thing. Without Big Jim's advice, Lynnie probably wouldn't have even given it a second thought. She was thankful for him. She was thankful that he liked her. She was thankful that even as he got to know her and saw her taste for sugar, he still thought she was pretty.

Lynnie pretended like she didn't still feel empty and ugly. She pretended like she was finally a princess.

Big Jim's proposal had been simple, sweet, and above all else, fast. He got down on one knee after three months of dating – on Christmas Day in 1963. They were married in June of 1964 in a New Haven church, which was about the only compromise Big Jim had been willing to make as they quickly planned their wedding. His family was from Boston, and he wanted to get married in Boston. But because Lynnie and her family had a church in New Haven (and he and his family weren't very religious), he was willing to bend that one rule for her. When he told her that he was willing to get married in Connecticut, she cheered and flung her arms around him like he'd promised her the moon. That was what it felt like – or, at least, it was how she wanted it to feel. This was her wedding. It was supposed to feel like love. It was supposed to make her feel beautiful. Sometimes, it did. Mostly, it just made her tired (and hungry).

On the wedding day, Lucy helped Lynnie get ready. She helped her choose a lipstick and held her dress open so Lynnie could step in. All the while, Lynnie couldn't stop chattering about how wonderful it felt to finally be like a princess and not just a fat girl with a candy bar and a fantasy. Those were the words she said out loud on her wedding day. When they crossed her lips and echoed in the tiny dressing room, Lucy furrowed her brow.

"Are you serious?" Lucy asked.

"Of course I am," Lynnie said. "Lucy, you remember what I used to look like."

"You looked pretty much exactly like you do right now."

Lynnie grabbed her midsection in terror. No. Not when she'd been thinking about it so much and trying _so hard_. Not on her wedding day. Big Jim would be repulsed.

"You've always been beautiful," Lucy said. "You were beautiful when you weighed a little more, and you're beautiful now that you weigh a little less."

"So, you admit I was fat before!" Lynnie said, pointing at Lucy.

"I never said you were fat," Lucy said. "It's just clear you've lost weight since you were in high school. And would you relax? Even if you'd ever been fat, you'd never stop being beautiful. Weight's got nothing to do with it."

Lynnie wanted to roll her eyes. Clearly, it had been some time since Lucy had been in Manhattan. If she'd been to Manhattan in the past decade, she'd know the truth. Lynnie would have been laughed out of the Empire State before. Now, she could just barely blend in, but she would take it. She would take it _gladly_.

"Well, either way," Lynnie said. "You know, I'm so glad I was a teenager when the Disney version of _Sleeping Beauty _came out. If I'd still been young, they would have made me play Meriwether on the playground."

"That's a compliment," Lucy said. "She's the only character with any sense in that story, besides Maleficent."

"What sense does Maleficent have?"

"Sometimes, it's very hard not to be invited to a party. You have to take your revenge somehow."

"You're getting more and more aggressive by the year, aren't you?"

"You don't live in Tulsa. Feels like there's a fight on every corner of my neighborhood. Probably because there is."

Lynnie snorted, amused. Lucy and her parents had been living in Tulsa since the late summer of 1962 because it was the first place where Uncle Jack had a tenure-track job. In that time, Lucy had apparently befriended a big group of greaser boys and their greasy sisters. They were violent and misbehaving, Lucy said, but they were good people. Lynnie would like them, she said. In all honesty, Lynnie had to doubt that. She was a sophisticated East Coaster. She'd been to Manhattan in the past year. She and Big Jim frequented the Met. He'd taken her to a few Broadway plays (paid for with his father's money, but Lynnie pretended not to notice). No one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, could be that sophisticated or artistic. She was quite sure she'd never travel there. It was beneath her.

"Well, I'm just happy the lady at the boutique told me that my dress was a street size six," Lynnie said. "It's not the four I was hoping to get down to, but a six is doable. I told Big Jim I was a size four, though. I think he'd like that better."

"Do you _hear _yourself?" Lucy asked.

"Yes," Lynnie said. "Is it really so bad to want to look good on my wedding day? I only get one of these, you know."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is, Lucy?"

Lucy sighed, and inwardly, Lynnie did, too. She knew what was so wrong with what she said. She understood the point. After all, she didn't become a student at Smith by being dumb. But to admit it would be to throw off her street-size-six wedding dress, bolt out of the tiny dressing room and the perfect family church, and start over somehow. She'd surely turn to Mallomars, just like she did in the past. She didn't want that anymore. She just wanted to marry Big Jim and take a rest. She'd earned it. Lynnie was too tired to look for anything else anymore.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Lucy asked. "I mean, you're hardly talking about yourself and how happy you are. You're just talking about whether you look good enough for your fiancé. That's kind of revealing, don't you think?"

"It's only revealing of how I want to be beautiful for my wedding," Lynnie said. "Stop thinking about things that aren't there."

Lucy sighed again. Lynnie wanted to sigh right along with her, but she couldn't. To sigh along with Lucy would mean admitting that there was something wrong that day. Lynnie didn't want to do that. She just wanted to get married. It was the easiest thing to do. To leave in that moment would have been to try something new, and she wasn't up for that. Trying something new meant being rejected, and rejection always made Lynnie feel ugly.

Couldn't Lucy just be happy that Lynnie had finally found something that made her feel beautiful? At the very least, getting married distracted Lynnie from her belief that she was ugly. Being wanted surely meant being beautiful.

She knew that wasn't true. She was just so tired of all her thoughts bouncing off one another and giving her a headache. All Lynnie wanted was to rest – preferably with an affluent businessman at her side. Couldn't Lucy just accept the fact that it was what Lynnie wanted?

Couldn't _Lynnie _just accept it herself?

"You're really happy?" Lucy asked. She was begging and pleading with Lynnie, and Lynnie knew that. She just didn't want to hear it.

"Yeah," Lynnie said.

She was disappointed. For a moment, she thought maybe she'd answer Lucy's question differently. But she couldn't. She wouldn't allow herself to be more. The last time she'd allowed herself to be more, she looked in the mirror and saw herself as a helium balloon. Never again. Now that she was turning twenty and becoming a wife, it was her responsibility to be beautiful.

Like a princess.

When the ceremony was over, and Lynnie and her new husband, Big Jim, walked back down the aisle as man and wife, she was surprised when he grabbed her around her (tiny, now) waist and whispered directly into her ear.

"You look so fucking sexy," he said. "I can't wait till this reception is over."

His voice sent chills up and down Lynnie's spine. It wasn't that she was necessarily looking forward to her wedding night with Big Jim. They'd spent several nights together before, and she didn't understand how someone with the name _Big Jim _could be so … politely average. Though he was the only man Lynnie had ever been with, she got the sense that his loving was, at best, mediocre. It wasn't the sex that made her shiver. No, Lynnie shivered because someone _wanted to have sex with her_. She shivered because someone thought she was beautiful.

And of that, she thought, she'd never be tired. It was about time.

* * *

_1967_

Lynnie Jones was twenty-two years old when she wasn't Lynnie Collins anymore.

It had all happened so fast – meeting and marrying Big Jim, getting pregnant on the night of their wedding, giving birth to their son, Jimmy, and discovering Big Jim in bed with his secretary like a delicious cliché. She'd found him in bed with the woman (who was _older _than Lynnie, which would continue to stun the hell out of her) in the spring of 1966, and their petition for divorce was granted by the spring of 1967. Big Jim had lost his petition for custody of Jimmy. The judge wasn't a big fan of philandering, as it turned out. As a result, it was much easier for Lynnie to legally earn back the name she was born with – much easier to change Jimmy's last name from _Collins _to _Jones _as well. He'd never know what he almost was. He was two years old and hardly ever asked for his father in the first place. There was no use in asking him to carry around another piece of the man who'd rejected both of them.

The logical part of Lynnie's brain knew that it wasn't her fault that Big Jim had strayed (with an older woman, his own secretary). She knew that. But there was a part of her – small yet shrieking – that wondered if Big Jim had strayed because he slowly realized that Lynnie wasn't as attractive as she was on the day they met at the football game. She'd been quite thin when they married, but since she became pregnant so soon into their marriage, Big Jim hadn't had a lot of time to spend with a thin wife. Everyday, Lynnie became bigger, rounder, and hungrier. Everyday, it seemed like Big Jim was at least somewhat understanding. But what if he hadn't been? What if every time he looked at Lynnie, who was only getting fat again to carry and birth their child, he regretted his choice to marry her? What if he fantasized about divorce? What if he dreamt about taking a thinner woman and nailing her up against the walls of his office? After months of rumination, Lynnie concluded that must have been it. Her fat, pregnant body must have inspired Big Jim to cheat. She knew she shouldn't have let herself eat that much more when she discovered the pregnancy. Maybe then, Big Jim wouldn't have left her.

Of course, she didn't regret Jimmy. Sweet Jimmy with his big eyes and wide smile. He could light up the world looking like that. Maybe it was cliché (It certainly was.), but Lynnie knew she would marry Big Jim again if it meant she would always have Jimmy in the end. She loved that boy more than she ever loved anything. He made her feel like she was important – not just like she was a body or a person or someone who ought to be a princess. When Lynnie would get Jimmy up from his nap, and he'd open up his eyes and grin at her in that infectious baby way, she knew better. She knew better than to hate herself. Even if Jimmy was a boy, and he would grow up with certain advantages and privileges that Lynnie could only fantasize about, she didn't want him to grow up with the kind of mother who stared at herself in the mirror and thought about how ugly she was. She didn't want to be the kind of mother who responded to, "You're beautiful, Mommy!" with "No, I'm not." She didn't want to teach Jimmy that that was how girls valued themselves. She wanted to show him that she was worth it – that all girls were worth it. She held him close to her chest in the childhood bedroom she'd been forced to move back into, and she breathed deeply.

Jimmy would know a different mama than the girl Lynnie had always been. It was time she stopped worrying about how to be a pretty princess and started learning how to be a person with scabby knees, stretch marks, and _hunger_. God, she was so hungry.

Her own mother called her down to the table for dinner, just like she had when she was younger. When Lynnie took her regular seat at the family's table, her parents looked at her nervously. They'd prepared grilled chicken breasts, green beans, and mashed potatoes – real ones with the bits of potato still mixed in, none of the instant, boxed garbage Big Jim had been so fond of during their short marriage. Lynnie's parents figured she would skip the mashed potatoes that night. She'd been crying about how she felt fat and ugly again, and when she felt that way, she had a tendency not to eat very much. It scared the shit out of them, but they never quite knew how to approach the subject with her. They always figured that would make it worse. It wasn't until many years later that Lynnie could tell them how wrong they'd been – how she'd previously believed that her parents' silence was endorsement of her self-hatred and starvation. How she thought it was the only way to be a princess, just like her father always called her. How she thought it was the only way she'd have worth or love.

But no one knew that then – not even Lynnie, in particular. All they did was stand around the bowl of mashed potatoes like it was a pipe bomb. They waited.

Lynnie motioned toward the bowl.

"Dad, can you pass the potatoes please?" she asked.

So, he did. And as the first bite passed Lynnie's lips, she knew what it was. Food. Just food. It wasn't some illicit drug or something she needed to code as shameful. This was not the Garden of Eden. This was a dinner table. She was a woman, not an angel or a princess, and as a woman, she needed food. She needed food to live and to be the kind of mother Jimmy could look up to. It all started with the potatoes.

And maybe it was time for a change of pace. Maybe she needed to pay Lucy a visit.

* * *

_1969_

Lynnie Jones was twenty-four years old when she found herself in love again.

The visit she paid to Lucy the year before to celebrate her daughter Elenore's first birthday had turned permanent quickly after Lynnie met Lucy's friend, Darry Curtis, in Tulsa. There was something about him that made it impossible to look away. At first, Lynnie thought it might have been the fact that he was bigger and taller than any man she'd ever met before (or, at least, bigger than Big Jim), and he quite literally stood out in a crowd. But then she saw the way he was with his youngest brother – firm, protective, but also warm, kind, and funny. In the short evening she spent with Lucy and her new friends (though not so new by the time Lynnie finally made her way down to Tulsa), Lynnie saw Darry playfully tease his littlest brother, Ponyboy, about his habit of immersive reading and how the siblings needed to continually announce themselves with increasing volume if they saw the kid in the room with a book. Lynnie found that charming. She knew Aunt Esther and Uncle Jack had to do the same thing to Lucy when they used to come and visit during the summer. Lucy would get tied up in one of her books and almost completely forget that she was there to play with Lynnie. She remembered looking over at Lucy that night and feeling unconscionably sad. For the past few years, Lucy hadn't just been tied up in a book. She'd been tied up in a whole bookstore, plus the husband who rented its apartment for her. When a man rents you the apartment above the only good bookstore in town, you tend to forget about your cousin back in Connecticut.

But Lynnie knew all of that would change before she even _spoke _to Darry Curtis. Something about the way he carried himself and spoke to the people he loved made Lynnie know that this was the right time to pay her first visit to Tulsa. Maybe the visit didn't really have anything to do with Lucy at all. When she finally got to talking to Darry, and she saw how sweet he could be _to her_, it was kind of the final straw. Perhaps she was still raw after her divorce. She didn't give it much thought. A couple of short months later, she found an elementary school job in Tulsa, moved into Aunt Esther and Uncle Jack's neighborhood with Jimmy in tow, and started over.

Big Jim hadn't put up a fight when Lynnie told him she was moving Jimmy to Tulsa with her. He was remarried to a different woman – about to graduate from Smith and pregnant with their first kid. It was the only thing he cared about anymore. Lynnie pretended like she was happy for him, and perhaps she even could have been, if not for Jimmy, who still asked questions about his dad.

But the questions became less and less frequent the longer Lynnie and Jimmy spent in Tulsa – the longer they got to know Darry and the rest of the Curtis folks. Darry wasn't like Big Jim at all. He was bigger, for certain, but more than that, he didn't care that Lynnie wasn't the size of a pencil, either. Big Jim used to throw hints at her ("You don't really _need _a side of fries, do you, sweetheart?"). Darry never did. He also never spewed bullshit ("I like a girl who can eat," which was something Lynnie had heard too many times before.), which Lynnie appreciated more than she could properly say. He just looked at her and thought she was beautiful – looked at her and talked to her and laughed with her until one day, they found they were in love with each other. For as long as she lived, Lynnie swore she'd never forget the exact moment she knew she was in love with Darry Curtis for the long haul. She and Darry had taken Jimmy down to Crutchfield Park in the middle of the day – a rare Saturday that Darry wasn't working for the roofing company – and Jimmy asked if Darry could teach him how to play football. At first, Lynnie was opposed. She didn't want Jimmy to make Darry relive something that wounded him far more than he was willing to let on – the fact that he hadn't been able to play football in college. Lynnie was the only person in the world who knew he still thought about it (and how _often _he still thought about it, too scared to bring it up out of fear he'd sound resentful of his late folks and three younger siblings). At the same time, she didn't want Jimmy to get involved with something so violent before his fourth birthday. She balked when Darry agreed to Jimmy's request, and off her look, Darry turned to her.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I know what I'm doin'."

Lynnie nodded, and before long, she discovered what Darry meant by "teaching football" to three-year-old Jimmy: He let him take hold of the ball and throw it on the ground a few times ("Touchdown!") and to teach him how to "tackle," Darry told Jimmy to run at him as fast as he could. Of course, a toddler was no match for the human equivalent of a brick wall (_Superman_, Ponyboy called him.), so Darry toppled himself to the ground, laughing all the way down. Jimmy climbed on top of the man he was becoming increasingly convinced was his father and kissed him smack dab in the middle of his forehead. Giggling, Lynnie extended her hand to help Darry up.

"You better watch out, Lynn," he said, more to Jimmy than to Lynnie. "That boy of yours is mighty."

In that moment, Lynnie knew she never wanted to know a life without Darry Curtis in it.

About a year later, when he took her for dinner on _the other side of town_, she suspected she knew what was about to happen. Darry almost never went to a restaurant (not even Jay's or the Dingo, because as Pony liked to put it, Darry developed an allergy to fun around the age of seventeen), and when he did, it was always for the most special of occasions: Pony's high school graduation and Jimmy's fourth birthday were the only two Lynnie could think of since she'd arrived in Tulsa full time. It wasn't the fanciest restaurant Lynnie had ever been to, but it was the fanciest Darry could give her. The fact that he'd gone all out for her like that was really something else. When he ordered them a plate of baked ziti, Lynnie's favorite food (which only the cheapest restaurants in Little Italy had on their menus because it was hardly sophisticated), she cocked an eyebrow at him from across the table.

"Why're you lookin' at me like that?" Darry asked.

"I think I finally figured out why I love you so much," Lynnie said.

"Finally? We've been seeing each other for a year, and you're only just _now _figuring this out?"

"Not exactly. The feeling was always there. I just didn't know the words."

"Kind of like when I hum along with 'Love Is All Around.'"

"OK, there are only like eight words in that song. The fact that you can't memorize it is disturbing to me."

"You should see what goes on up here, Lynnie."

"I'm sure you've got a lot of stress. But you aren't the mother of a small boy. Therefore, I win."

"Maybe I ain't the _mother _of a small boy, but I like to think I play a part. Y'know. As long as you'll let me."

Lynnie smiled, the tricks that were up her sleeve now poking through.

"Well," she said. "Don't you want to know?"

"Know what?"

"Why it is I love you so much."

Darry almost turned scarlet. He'd had girlfriends before (though admittedly not for a little while before Lynnie came around), but as cliché as it was, none of them were like Lynnie. There was something about the way the two of them could talk to each other that was so different than anyone else in the world – his brothers, his sister, their friends … anyone. He'd dated smart girls, funny girls, and sweet girls, and they were all wonderful. But there was something between him and Lynnie that he couldn't explain. Maybe she could.

"Why don't you tell me?" Darry asked.

"The reason I love you, Darrel Shaynne Curtis, Jr.," Lynnie said, smirking at her own cheeky use of his full name, "is that you just joined in."

Darry furrowed his brow.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means you never expected me to change things for you," Lynnie said. "You never expected me to slow down and let you catch up. When I moved here with Jimmy and my job all lined up and ready to go, you didn't need to take some time and figure things out. You just joined in. It was kind of like you'd been there all along."

"Well, what can I say?" Darry asked. "You were worth just jumpin' on in for. Plus, it's not like I didn't have some practice when it comes to quick adjustments."

Neither of them said another word about that. Lynnie already knew how much it tortured Darry to know that he was going to get married without his parents there to see it.

"Well, I appreciate it, anyway," Lynnie said. "Nobody ever made me feel like I was worth that much of their time before I met you. You never even said anything about the food I like or wondered whether I was too fat, like everybody else who was ever in your place. I was so tired of it. Everybody else made me feel like I was some big wicked fairy. You're the first one who made me feel like Sleeping Beauty."

"What?"

Lynnie blushed. She hadn't realized how long she'd been carrying that story from kindergarten.

"Sorry," she said. "Childhood trauma. Maybe I'll tell you more about it one day."

"Well, I think we're gonna have a long time."

Lynnie beamed as Darry got up from his chair and knelt in front of her. She'd never been one to hope for a public proposal (had spent a lot of time thinking about it since her childhood, like a good Princess Lynnie would), but it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. And it wasn't because Darry was going to be her second husband or that this was going to be her second wedding. It was that Darry was going to be her husband, period. This was going to be a wedding, period. She was tired of thinking she was worth anything less than that.

The ring wasn't fancy, but it was still beautiful. It was even more beautiful (and even more daunting) when Darry told her about it.

"This ring was my mother's," he said. "She left it to me 'fore she passed. Said she was real tired of wearin' an engagement ring with her wedding band. Didn't like the way they cut off her circulation."

Lynnie laughed a little.

"It was gettin' to the point I thought I'd never get to use it," Darry continued. "Then you came around, and I knew it was only a matter of time. That's why I'm so cheesed off ya used my full name a minute ago. Tonight was the night I was supposed to use _yours_."

Lynnie laughed even more. Everyone was staring, but she didn't care. She was tired of caring about what people thought when they looked at her. She didn't need them to look at her – not anymore.

"You still can," Lynnie said. "In fact, I'd like it if you would. Makes it seem all official if you do."

This time, they laughed together.

"Well, then, if you insist," Darry said. "Lynnie Elizabeth Jones, do you wanna marry me?"

The answer was clear. When Darry slipped his mother's ring onto Lynnie's finger, she stared at it until it looked like a royal gemstone. It wasn't the fact that a handsome man built like a prince had given it to her because he loved her – every part of her, even the parts that were raising a toddler and liked to eat pasta more than salad. Darry's love was certainly something she was thankful for and glad to have in her life. In fact, Lynnie was more than glad to have Darry around (and, now, forever). But it was more than that. Lynnie finally loved herself enough to look at the ring on her finger and the life she'd built all on her own and think, if only silently, that this was not a life fit for a princess. But it was a life fit for a Lynnie, and was that not all she needed?

* * *

_1971_

Lynnie Jones was twenty-six years old when she found herself a mother for the second time.

This time was different. When Jimmy was born, Big Jim had been distracted, only caring a bit when he learned he had a son because sons would, someday, make good companions for sports and cigars (a brilliant irony, as Jimmy had grown up to call another man _Dad_). Lynnie had spent the majority of her pregnancy lonely, wishing she could be thin again, wishing that Big Jim would touch her without recoiling because for him, to be pregnant was to be revolting. In other words, she'd spent the better part of a year feeling like she was worth nothing.

It was different with Darry. When Lynnie told him that she was pregnant, he panicked for a moment or two (space in the house since Soda and his wife, Jane, still had yet to move out, money, a fear that he knew how to be a guardian but not a father), but even in the midst of his panic, Lynnie was thrilled. The panic meant he loved her. He wanted to be her baby's – _their _baby's – father.

He didn't care that Lynnie gained weight while she was pregnant. And when she was too tired to stand, he made dinner, took Jimmy to school, and cleaned up around the house. He even set Soda and Jane up with a place of their own. She might not have been his princess (By twenty-six, Lynnie knew she wasn't Princess Lynnie.), but she was his priority.

She'd had a conversation with her father in the eighth month of her second pregnancy. She told him that as much as she'd liked being called _Princess Lynnie _when she was a young girl, it had done more harm than good. Her father looked like he might break down and cry. He'd only wanted her to know how much he loved her and how beautiful – with her electric blue eyes, fiery smile, and love of the small things in life, like fairytales – he knew she was. Lynnie said she knew that. On the inside and in the pit of her heavy heart, she knew that he'd only loved her and wanted her to know that to her father, she was more special than special. But when she'd looked at herself in the mirror next to other little (littler) girls in her classes, she'd felt like she was stumbling and wrong. She thought, even though she knew differently, that he had lied to her. Her father looked like he would cry harder then. After awhile, he looked at her and said he understood, now, why Esther was so harsh on Lucy.

Willow-Rose Caroline Curtis came into the world on the bitterly cold evening of February 7, 1971. She was named for the flowers and leaves her parents missed in the depths of winter. When she came into the world, she was about as bright, beautiful, and new as an early spring. Willow-Rose, they decided, but they'd just call her Willow. Willow after Lynnie and Lucy's favorite tree in the New Haven park, Rose after Frances Rose Curtis (and not _Sleeping Beauty_), and Caroline, because the Joneses were incapable of missing the opportunity to name their girls after _Pride and Prejudice_. When Lynnie held her in her arms, and Willow looked up at her mother for the first time, Lynnie thought of three things all at once.

_My goodness_, she thought. _This baby's got her father's eyes_.

And there they were – Darry's blue-green eyes on a little baby girl with the roundest and most perfect head Lynnie had seen since Jimmy was born six years earlier. Pony always described Darry's eyes as cold, but Lynnie had never seen it that way. To her, Darry's eyes were electric – serious, yes, but always inviting and sincere. She'd thought they were beautiful eyes (and approachable eyes) since she'd met him at Elenore's birthday party years before. She'd secretly wished that her new baby would have Darry's eyes. Then, maybe, her baby would grow up to be like him. Maybe, her baby would grow up to be just as loving, sacrificing, and accepting. Either way, the baby would grow up to be beautiful.

Then, it occurred to Lynnie that this wasn't just a baby anymore. This was her _daughter_. This was a _little girl_. After spending the past six years in _boy world_, how was she supposed to switch out and be the mother to a girl? After teaching Jimmy that the world would open up to him, how would she teach Willow the same thing when she knew (as much as she wanted it to be) that the same wasn't always true for her? How was she supposed to be the mother of a little girl without always walking around with a broken heart?

She thought of her old nickname one more time. _Princess Lynnie_. There was a big difference between the time Lynnie was born and now, the moment Lynnie was holding Willow and making her very first promises to the little one. When Lynnie's father had called her princess, he meant it, but he meant it in the only way a father could have in the mid-1940s: Special beautiful girl who is so, so loved. But princesses aren't just beautiful in the eyes of their fathers and mothers. Lynnie knew that now. Princesses had to be beautiful to the little girls in the schoolyard who valued the tiny and dainty. Princesses had to be beautiful to men who would offer them pretty rings and shelter them, and even once those men became bored, princesses weren't allowed to speak up and leave – not until they were given a righteous excuse. Lynnie had never wanted that life. She just hadn't known what else to choose. No one ever told her she was given a choice. She was tired of believing that. She was tired of thinking it was what she should want, and she was tired of thinking it was what she should want for her little girl – her Willow – too.

Darry came up beside Lynnie and rested his hand on her shoulder.

"She's sure pretty, ain't she?" he asked.

"Gorgeous," Lynnie agreed. "Because she's ours."

"Ain't that the truth."

"Can you promise me one thing?"

"Anything."

Lynnie took a deep breath. She stared down at the little face (Willow's face) in her arms and hoped for the day when she would finally learnt to smile. She couldn't wait to see that smile. She couldn't wait to make sure that no one would ever snuff it out.

Lynnie looked up at Darry with hopeful eyes.

"Can you promise," she said, "that you'll never call her princess?"

And Darry, knowing all the damage the word _princess _had done to his lovely (lovelier than lovelier) wife, kissed the top of her head and looked softly into Willow's eyes – the eyes that were so beautifully and remarkably his.

* * *

"Yeah, Lynn," he said. "I think we can make that work."

**This story technically passes the Bechdel test in the 1959 vignette. As you can imagine, that's a very difficult task for my fics, which concentrate on a book about young men, to actually accomplish.**

**Is it an **_**Outsiders **_**fan fiction if a canon character doesn't show up until the penultimate vignette? Maybe not, but if you've read 'See My Friends' and 'Turn the Page,' you know that Lynnie's been on her way to our Darry for quite some time.**

**I don't know how I feel about the fairytale connection in this story, same as with "Displaced" and "Wolfish." It's a looser connection with the idea of being tired, but it's there. Lynnie is still a character I struggle with, but I did know (for a long time) that she has body-image issues. I hope to keep exploring that in the larger narrative (with canon characters involved, of course).**

**Hinton owns**_** The Outsiders**_**. Disney owns their rendition of **_**Sleeping Beauty**_**, which I watched in preparation to write this story.**


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